Boosting the Efficiency of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells by a Multifunctional Composite Photoanode to 14.13 %

We report a new strategy to fabricate a multifunctional composite photoanode containing TiO₂ hollow spheres (TiO₂-HSs), Au nanoparticles (AuNPs) and novel NaYF₄ : Yb,Er@NaLuF₄ : Eu@SiO₂ upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs). The AuNPs are grown on the photoanode film including TiO₂-HSs and UCNPs by a simple in situ plasmonic treatment. As a result, an impressive power conversion efficiency of 14.13 % is obtained, which is a record for N719 dye-based dye-sensitized solar cells, demonstrating great potential for the solar cells toward commercialization. This obvious enhancement is ascribed to a collaborative mechanism of the TiO₂-HSs exhibiting excellent light-scattering ability, of the UCNPs converting near-infrared photons into visible photons and of the AuNPs presenting outstanding surface plasmon resonance effect. Notably, a steady-state experiment further reveals that the champion cell exhibits 95.33 % retainment in efficiency even after 180 h of measurements, showing good device stability.